PHILIP BALL
The last time I checked—about 16 years ago—my sperm count was rather feeble. That didn’t feel like the devastating blow to my manhood that it might once have been. It’s a common enough problem: an estimated one in 20 young men (I was hardly that even then) have sperm counts low enough to impair fertility. But neither does it feel that the matter is taken very seriously. Doctors tend to shrug: “Oh, so that’s the problem.
“Anything I can do?” I asked my GP. “Not really”, he replied indifferently, not bothering to check if I was a heavy drinker or what my diet was like—both factors that have been shown to cause trouble for sperm.